I thought I had experienced great customer service before, but this week I have been incredibly fortunate to enjoy customer service at a new level, a level that’s unrivalled by anything I have seen before.

This service was provided by the Limewood Hotel in the New Forest. My wife and I having ‘won’ a night away at this hotel in a charity auction headed down to the the idyllic New Forest, conveniently dropping the kids off en-route.

Ah, the Limewood I hear you say - that £££ expensive place - of course the service would be amazing! Well, yes, that is partly true - it is easier to offer an amazing service in beautiful surroundings and first class chefs. If it had not been for charity, we would not have thought that we could justify the cost.

The interesting thing however is that the things that made the customer service exceptional did not cost anything. The staff have all, without exception, engaged in a culture of nothing being a problem and always being personable. I don’t doubt that there is an organised process ‘behind the scenes’ to achieve this standard – ‘homework’ must have been done as they knew some things about us which obviously helped when engaging in conversation. Never did we feel like just another guest and it was all delivered without it feeling awkward or pretentious.

Would we go again? Already saving the pennies! If you run a business and have not been before - I heartedly recommend it. It will be a very worthwhile and enjoyable research trip.

Who was this person? The caretaker at our kids’ school. It was the annual clean-up the school Saturday so, along with a bunch of other willing parents and kids, we turned up to help-out.

The caretaker, or rather co-caretaker who shares the job with his equally impressive wife, welcomed us and thanked us for giving up our time to help. This was not just a flippant comment, but he actually took the time to speak with us as though we were the only people there and it was clear he meant it from the heart. He then gave us some very clear instructions about what needed doing whilst engaging in some natural conversation about the weather or such like. He also ran through some basic health and safety stuff as my job involved using some cleaning products and a ladder! This was not done as a tick-box exercise, but with genuine care. I suspect he had not even realised he had done a health and safety check – as it was simply within his natural nature to check that people were okay with what he was asking of them. Throughout the next couple of hours or so, he popped by a couple of times – to check how we were and gave a few more encouraging words.

I don’t know, but I suspect that he has not had the privilege of an MBA from LSE or similar, but then when you think about what he did – all the skills he deployed, he probably learnt from his mum and dad by the age of 5.

I have often reflected on my time in corporate life and feel that somehow our education process and what we learn from our seniors leads us to forget about the most important things of management/leadership. I had the great fortune to be promoted early in my career, but certainly look back with some great memories, but also some regrets. I know that, for a time, I thought good leadership was about KPIs, checklists and, sometimes, using the ‘stripes’ on my shoulder to force through change. Hopefully, I am much better at this leadership thing now.